[MD] Two Minds

[John Carl]

Austin,

Big storm coming next week  to Northern California, which means I'll
have time to go into this with you more fully then.  Right now, I've
got a house to finish roofing but let me just say I agree with your
point about the relationship between social and intellectual
patterning needing a thorough revisement.

The most useful contribution I've gotten from this group in a long
time, was Dan pointing out that the MoQ is a map and shouldn't be
taken as the territory.  We'll discuss next week, which parts of the
map ought to be revised to match that actual territory.

John

On 11/4/15, Austin Fatheree <austin.fatheree at gmail.com> wrote:
> If things have been too quiet, let me throw some things out there for
> discussion.  I know I'm late to the party so if any of this has been
> discussed before, feel free to point me in the right direction.
>
> A thing occurred to me while reading Lila that is really a technical point,
> albeit I think an important one, that doesn't really change any conclusions
> that Pirsig makes, but that may be worth discussion.
>
> Pirsig indicates that the Intellectual level emerges from the social
> level(and by definition emerged in time after the social level) and thus
> has moral authority over it.
>
> I think this is technically wrong, although the technical reasons don't end
> up changing many of the conclusions.
>
> I think that both the social and intellectual levels emerged out of the
> biological level.  The intellectual did emerge after the social and still
> holds moral authority over it and still has access to it, but it is more
> correct to say that it emerged from biology.
>
> I think this because it more adequately fits what we see in reality.  Our
> brains have many parts and recent Psychological analysis shows that it also
> has multiple modes.  Kahneman puts this forward in Thinking Fast and Slow (
> http://amzn.to/1MzA82R ).  Here we see System 1 (Quick Judgments) and
> System 2 (Methodical Thought) being driven by various parts of the brain
> and assimilated in the neocortex.  The theory is that the more reptilian
> brain evolved first, and the neocortex evolved with access to these other
> parts of the brain to add prediction and better fitness.  System 1 is the
> social level brain and System 2 is the intellectual part.  System 1 just is
> and just does.  System 2 can override and use simulated expectations as a
> basis.
>
> Ultimately though, both evolutions were biological responses to fitness.
> Both emerged out of biology and out of what the biological level values
> (fitness).
>
> I think this is important because at one point Pirsig says that a level
> only has access to the level below it.  I think the Intellectual level does
> have access to the biological(although it has many built in biases because
> System 1 was around with it developed).  System 2 may even be completely
> reliant on System 1 existing, but it can still reach down through it and
> act at the biological level.
>
> Unfortunately the fallout from this is that distinguishing that the
> intellectual level should have moral authority over the social level
> becomes even murkier.  Unfortunately this also seems be an accurate map of
> the territory.  I’m from Houston and yesterday we voted down our Houston
> Equal Rights Ordinance(HERO) because we have a significant portion of our
> population that has no desire to operate at an intellectual level.  It is
> all still way to social here in the South and social means that that guy
> over there is going to get one over on me if I don’t take it for myself.
> Boo us.
>
> --
> Austin
> twitter: @afat http://twitter.com/afat
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-- 
"finite players
play within boundaries.
Infinite players
play *with* boundaries."